She shrugged. “Half an hour for minor infractions. An hour or more for the important ones.”
A muscle jumped in Griffin’s cheek. The line of his scar became pronounced. “No one could possibly stay on their feet after so long in the chair.”
“Not easily, no. I imagine that’s why they applied the strap when a girl faltered and fell. How long it took to rise from the floor depended on her strength of character and will.”
Griffin wondered if his face was as cool and colorless as it felt. He was careful to speak quietly, certain she did not deserve to hear his thoughts at the volume he heard them in his own head. “Bloody hell, Olivia. Strength of character and will be damned. That is nonsense. You are describing an abomination. Torture, not punishment, and in no wise discipline.”
She blinked. “It has never been done to you?”
“God, no. The dons, house masters, and proctors at Hambrick Hall were strict and embraced the efficacy of the rod, too much so for my tastes, but even they would shy from what you are telling me. Who stood over you while it was being done? The sisters?”
“No. Oh, no. They prayed for us. They could not…would not…no, the sisters had no part in that.”
They had also deliberately turned their heads, but Griffin did not say so. “A priest, then. Was it a priest?”
“Sometimes.” She could not be certain when she ceased to hold his hand and he began holding hers.
“Sometimes,” he said softly. It meant there were other tormentors. “Olivia, who were the men that forced themselves on you?”
Olivia flinched a little, but he held her fast. She had wanted him to know that she had memories of light and laughter that were separate from the darker recollections and that she was shaped by both experiences, not one exclusive of the other. “I should not speak of them.”
The childlike tenor of her voice startled them both, but it was Griffin who frowned. She had spoken the words as though she had learned them by rote and was now obliged to recite them.
As if testing the waters, she said them again. “I should not speak of them.”
“Is that what you were told, Olivia?”
“I don’t remember. It seems as if it must be, doesn’t it?”
He squeezed her hand gently. “Perhaps it is something that one cannot come at directly. It’s possible you never knew their names. What can you speak of?”
“Not all of us were chosen. The girls, I mean. I remember that. We were not all selected to go.”
“To go where?”
“To wherever it was that we went.” She drew her hand back and chose one of the cold toast points. “I was a child. I cannot say more than that. I don’t know where I was or where I was taken. It was a very small world and was not made significantly larger by being taken beyond the convent walls.”
“Did you go alone?”
“Alone. In pairs. Never more than three. I told you once that I went willingly that first time. Do you remember?”
“I remember.”
“My greatest shame is that I wanted to be chosen. There were presents afterward. Sweets. Ribbons. Gloves. Lace. Pretty bonnets and slippers. I was envious of what I saw other girls receiving. I had nothing from home. No letters. No packages. I learned quickly that I should never expect to receive anything from my family, so when girls returned from their carriage rides and showed the gifts they’d been allowed to take, I wanted the same.”
Griffin thought of his sisters. He imagined them elbowing one another out of the way, leaping across prostrate bodies to reach the waiting carriage first. They would have been eager, even greedy, and they would have been made to pay dearly, just as Olivia had been made to pay. But for the grace of God, there went Jenny, Kate, and Juliet. “You did nothing wrong.”
“I know it, and yet it does not always seem so.”
“That is because when you reflect upon it you think you had a choice. You didn’t. Never once. Not even at the first.”
Griffin’s implacable features were softened by Olivia’s tears. She knuckled them away impatiently. She required him to be uncompromising in the position he took and in the position he took it from. She wanted to be—needed to be—convinced. “How can you know?”
“You would know it as well but for the fact that it happened to you.”
“I was called out to one of the carriages many times.”
“Do you say that to punish yourself?”
